Sailing in Marin: Fairfax's Steinberg works to get messages out to help ships avoid tragedies

Two lives were tragically lost when the replica of the famous square-rigger HMS Bounty sunk off the North Carolina coast during Superstorm Sandy in late October. Miraculously, 14 people survived the ordeal in large part because of systems on board that enabled a distress message to be relayed via email.

While there's a government investigation into the tragedy that's rendered communications from stakeholders on hold for now, marine electronics guru Eric Steinberg of Fairfax believes there's an important message in all this: the fact that an operator on board the sinking ship was able to successfully get a distress messages out over Single Side Band (SSB) email after failing at attempts to make a satellite link and voice contact over SSB.

"It's a known dynamic that data over SSB is more robust than voice so it's not surprising to us that the operator was able to make a data connection but not a voice connection," said Steinberg, the owner of Farallon Marine Electronics based in Sausalito.

Steinberg grew up in Point Reyes and studied electronics at Santa Rosa Junior College. He raced Express 27s competitively on the bay and developed a strong interest in marine electronics. He was an early adopter in the late '90s of High Frequency/Single side Band (HF/SSB) as a mode to effectively distribute data like email. Currently, his expertise also is being put to use in his role as director of electronics systems at America's Cup Race Management for the 34th America's Cup.

He may be passionate about distributing data via HF/SSB, but Steinberg also recognizes the key health and safety benefits that the system offers. Simply, HF/SSB is able to send long distances by bouncing the signal off the earth and ionosphere, the same phenomena that enables hearing AM radio stations from hundreds or thousands of miles away at night.

HF/SSB is more effective than other common communications systems like satellite when there's widespread devastation such as Sandy or Katrina because it offers a one-to-many conversation, greatly enhancing the ability to reach someone quickly.

Like a cellphone tower, there are just a number of connections a satellite can make. In the case of the Bounty, the severe weather also may have prevented the satellite from getting through. Signals will go through bad weather but not solid walls of water, said Steinberg. Even on a clear day, there are plenty of factors that prevent a connection like satellite position versus your position, obstructions between the satellite antenna and the satellite.

Since Katrina, state, county and federal emergency service groups as well as hospitals have embraced the HF/SSB technology. In Emergency Operation Centers (EOCs) you may now find a radio, modem, computer and an antenna system which in the event of disaster that cuts a community off from the rest of the world, would enable data to be sent outside of an area as far as 6,000 miles — at least across this country.

Sailors, especially those who venture offshore for extended periods, have enjoyed the benefits of SSB email since the mid '90s. Like other systems on a boat, SSB installation can be a labor-intensive but once installed, adding email capability is quite simple, said Steinberg.

"To send data over HF/SSB, the set-up requires a radio with an antenna system connected to a modem that modulates the radio, and a computer from which to send and receive data," he said. "A piece of software manages email, and it can embed the ship's position into your emails. It also gives you weather information."

Initial installation of HF/SSB can be costly. In the long run, though, adding a modem onto the SSB offers a way to send data very inexpensively, or even free for Ham radio operators through the Ham Winlink network, which is similar to the marine SailMail network, a radio-based email system that's been around since 1997. Winlink and Sailmail use the same equipment and software onboard the boat and are akin to being different cellular providers — both give you communications access but are different networks.

Pacific Cup Commodore Steve Chamberlain has used SSB with email since his sloop Surprise boat was launched in 1997. It's since been to Alaska, Mexico twice, Hawaii twice, and through the South Pacific to New Zealand.

He said, "The equipment gave me the ability to communicate from my boat with my businesses back home and provided a lot of information, like being able to download weather files directly from NOAA — when you're in the middle of the ocean, that information is priceless."

SSB also gives you access to the marine nets, which are communications groups that meet at an appointed time and frequency and track boats in passage, for which there is no comparable satellite medium, said Chamberlain.

Matt Brooks and Pam Levy, owners of the recently restored classic yacht Dorade which often resides at Sausalito's Schoonmaker Marina, recently installed HF/SSB on the 83-year old boat. They plan to race Dorade in the Transpac Race 2013.

"In 1929, Dorade was a shatteringly high-tech boat," Brooks said. "The goal of our current refit is to retain the essence of Dorade, while invisibly using today's version of high tech to again compete in today's racing."

In an ideal world, ocean-going sailboats will have both SSB and a satellite phone because they serve different purposes, said Steinberg.

"When boiled down, HF/SSB is a basic piece of safety equipment that I encourage people to strongly consider. By highlighting the Bounty incident I hope we can raise awareness of its effectiveness."